Doctors see some benefit from Net-searching patients

As more people go online for health information, physicians are finding that research can deepen levels of conversation during visits.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. Aug. 15, 2005.

As the popularity of the Internet soared in the mid- to late 1990s, physicians feared that they would be inundated with irrelevant questions and questionable health information based on documents their patients would find on the Internet.

But for the most part, that fear has proven unfounded. The Internet has become a tool that, used properly, improves rather than harms physician efficiency, according to physicians and industry observers.

"I think that in some cases patients come in and you spend a lot of time trying to undo something that was erroneous that they saw on the Internet, but for the most part that's not true," said AMA Board of Trustees Secretary Joseph M. Heyman, MD, a solo gynecologist in Amesbury, Mass.

Today, 74% of American adults are online, compared with 38% in 1998, according to a Harris Poll released July 15. Of those who are online, 72% have searched for health information and 90% of them believe the information they find is either very or somewhat reliable.

Generally, patients who search for information online tend to be well-educated and have a medical condition or a family member with one, physicians say. Whether the information is reliable or off-the-wall depends on the patients themselves and the sites they visit, physicians say.

Meanwhile, doctors are referring patients to sites operated by specialty societies, academic medical centers, government agencies and organizations that focus on specific diseases. The AMA partly owns Medem, a San Francisco-based company that offers Web site services to physicians, including links to content written by medical societies.